TidBITS#75/05-Aug-91
====================
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Topics:
MailBITS/5-Aug-91
CE Ships Kanji QuickMail
Notebooks... the Next Generation
One Minute Magazine
A New Voice
Integrated Software Wars
Reviews/5-Aug-91
MailBITS/5-Aug-91
-----------------
Last week's issue of TidBITS contained an article about the
astronauts on board the space shuttle Atlantis planning to use
AppleLink from space to communicate with ground personnel. I
commented that, "Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for the
astronauts and their sanity, the shuttle's AppleLink address is
being kept confidential." A couple of readers have written to say
that they've discovered that the address is "Atlantis." I'll say
this... I feel sorry for the real owner of the AppleLink address
"Atlantis," because it's not NASA! Yes, the address exists, but it
has been there for a while. No doubt these poor people have been
deluged with messages. Please don't contribute to the problem by
writing to them yourself!
TidBITS will have a few roving reporters in Boston this week to
report on the Macworld Expo. I'd love to meet some other TidBITS
readers (after all, most of the time I'm a reader myself), so if
you're going to be at the Expo, please feel free to leave a
message for "Mark H. Anbinder" in the convention center's message
system (you can leave out the "H." if it'll confuse the people at
the message desk).
Don't forget to look for next week's Macworld Expo issue,
containing lots of info about what was hot at the show.
Below is some material that Adam sent me for inclusion in this
week's MailBITS.
Just before packing up my Mac for Seattle, I received email from
Henry Norr of MacWEEK, who was upset with the way I related his
comment on the new ROMs issue. Contrary to what I said (due to my
misunderstanding his original note), Henry said that he didn't
feel the issue warranted another story at that point, not that he
felt the issue was dead. My apologies to Henry and to all of you
for muddying the article behind incorrect information. That's one
of the problems with email - short messages with little context
are easy to misconstrue. Henry also said in his recent note that
not only did he not feel that the issue was dead, but that MacWEEK
has continued to pay attention to the matter (by printing a recent
letter to the editor) and will continue to do as warranted.
Thanks, Henry! I hope that continued attention from TidBITS and
MacWEEK will help jolt Apple management into making a policy
statement on the issue, as we politely requested in the letter
sent to them. See below for another bit on the subject.
In the near future TidBITS will have a new home on America Online.
Thanks to Chris Ferino (AFL Ferino) for setting up a TidBITS file
area in the Hardware file libraries (keyword: mhw). All new issues
will show up there and eventually we'll have all the older issues
there as well. As an added bonus, Chris has agreed to give anyone
who writes an entire TidBITS issue a free hour of time on America
Online, so send your submissions in to Mark and us (after we're
set up again) if you wish to get that free hour on AOL. If you
aren't sure about how to go about writing an issue, just ask Mark
for our basic guidelines - they're easy to follow.
One of our readers contributes the following about Apple's clean
ROM saga. Apple published "Macintosh IIci Computer Training" in
its Quick Reference Booklet series. The copyright is 1989. On page
23 of this booklet is the beginning of a section titled "User
Questions". The second user question listed on that page is: "Is
the new ROM universal? That is, will it be incorporated into all
Macintosh CPUs?" The answer stated by Apple on that same page:
"No. The ROM will be available only on the Macintosh IIci. The
features incorporated into the Macintosh IIci ROM, especially
including 32-bit addressing, will be made available to the
installed base of Macintosh IIx, IIcx, II, SE and SE/30 owners at
a later date."
Now what I get from this is that Apple will make the ROM available
to the installed base, not that Apple will produce new machines
which the installed base can purchase. Also note the listing of
the Mac SE - which has never been discussed in the AOL forums as
one of the machines that would receive the new ROM. While MODE32
could be construed as making the 512K ROM features available, it
does not fulfill making it available to the Mac SE! The 1989 date
also shows that Apple knew full well in 1989 that the ROMs were
dirty in the pre-Mac IIci CPUs.
You should be able to get the actual booklet at one of the Apple
dealers in your area - they probably have it put away some where
in a back room or threw it away. A lot of these booklets were
produced for the IIci so one should be available. I have two of
them - one without the two disks that comes with the booklet.
My statements were made as a lawyer, which I remain, but because I
like the Mac so much I no longer have the legal profession as my
primary profession.
Information from:
Mark H. Anbinder -- mha@memory.ithaca.ny.us
Adam C. Engst
Pythaeus
CE Ships Kanji QuickMail
------------------------
CE Software, Inc., the publisher of QuickMail, QuicKeys2, and a
bunch of other neat products, has just announced a new version of
QuickMail designed to work with KanjiTalk, Apple's Japanese
version of the Mac operating system. CE worked on the project with
a Japanese partner, Software Research Associates, or SRA.
Lots of normal Macintosh programs work fine under KanjiTalk, but a
program must be specially designed to take full advantage of
KanjiTalk, to allow users to work in Japanese. Because of the
large number of characters in the Kanji Japanese writing system,
KanjiTalk uses two bytes of the computer's memory to represent
each character, instead of the single byte used to represent a
character in the Roman character set, used by most versions of the
Mac OS. The screen shots enclosed with the press release
distributed by CE recently show that the Kanji product, known as
CEQUICKMAIL, cleanly integrates Roman and Kanji text within the
same window.
CE has already been distributing versions of QuickMail in
languages such as Swedish, German, French, Danish, and Italian,
but this is the first two-byte version. According to Paul Miller,
the director of CE's International Department, "The goal of
globalization of our products has leaped forward with the support
of 2-byte character systems." He anticipates an exploding market
for Macintosh networking in Japan. These Iowans are already the
leading supplier of network mail software for the Macintosh, with
over 350,000 QuickMail users worldwide.
Software Research Associates can be reached at: 1-1-1 Hirakawa-
cho, Chiyoda-ku, 102 Tokyo, Japan. Phone: 81 3 3234 2624, Fax: 81
3 3234 4338, AppleLink: DVJ.SRA.INC
CE Software, Inc. -- 515/224-1995 -- AppleLink: CESOFTWARE
Information from:
CE propaganda
Sue Nail, CE Software, Inc.
Notebooks... the Next Generation
--------------------------------
Apple is expected to release a series of three computers this
October that will be the first Macs that deserve the name
"notebook computer." That doesn't mean, though, that the rest of
the industry should hold its collective breath!
Outbound Systems Inc. has had a popular alternative to the
heavier, more expensive Macintosh Portable for over a year now,
and a special agreement negotiated with Apple allows them to ship
Apple ROM chips, taken from used Macs, in Outbound portable
computers. Their new product, the Outbound Notebook System, will
give impatient Mac users an alternative to this fall's Apple
offerings.
The new six-pound Outbound Notebook System shows quite a bit of
promise. It can hold both an internal high density floppy disk
drive and an internal hard drive, as opposed to the low-end Apple
notebook, which will contain one or the other. A proper notebook,
the new Outbound will fold down to 8.5 by 11 inches. I am
skeptical of Outbound's assertion of a new-and-improved pointing
device, which looks an awful lot like it's just an IsoPoint with a
new-and-improved name. Given that there's no room on this machine
for a trackball, I suppose the "TrackBar" (their new device) will
be a reasonable substitute.
The truly stunning notebook computer in the news this month is
NCR's System 3125, a pen-based 386 portable that weighs less than
four pounds. No, it's not a Mac or a Mac-compatible, but this
machine will show us what might be down the road for Mac users.
The 8.5 by 11 inch 3125 has no keyboard, which means there's lots
of room for the 640x480 greyscale liquid crystal display. Instead
of typing, the user enters data and controls the system using an
included pen, with either GO's PenPoint operating system, or
Microsoft's competing PenWindows. (The computer comes with one or
the other operating system, but not both.) This means the NCR
notebook isn't quite suited to every computing need, but it would
certainly be good for data entry tasks such as inventory
management, appointment scheduling, and address/phone databases.
Of course, computer users who have never liked keyboards will be
pleased by the option of using this handwriting-recognizing
technology.
What does this mean for the future? Aside from a vague resemblance
to Apple's Knowledge Navigator dream computer (you may have seen
the video tapes of the computer that talks to you... and
understands spoken commands) the NCR 3125 is really just a
rearrangement of existing technology. Sony has been selling their
"palmtop" computer, a personal organizer with handwriting
recognition technology, for about a year, and of course iconic,
windowing operating systems aren't new. The key to NCR's product
release is the combination... solid handwriting recognition in a
real computer that's light enough and small enough to use
anywhere.
Apple's three upcoming notebook computers are a step toward the
same "next generation" category. They are much lighter and smaller
than the existing Macintosh Portable models, and when closed at
least, are notebook sized. The keyboard on the Macs, though, will
mean that Apple will always seem to be behind the pack in notebook
technology. I'm not saying that I want to see a Mac without a
keyboard... at least not until they can replace it with a method
of text entry that's just as fast and accurate! However, the
industry is going to start wondering where Apple's REAL notebooks
are.
NCR Corp. -- 513/445-6160 -- 800/225-5627
Outbound Systems Inc. -- 303/786-9200 -- 800/444-4607
Information from:
Outbound propaganda
BYTE
Related articles:
BYTE -- Aug-91, Vol. 16, #8, pg. 37
MacWEEK -- 30-Jul-91, Vol. 5, #26, pg. 1
One Minute Magazine
-------------------
According to a recent Newsbytes article that a friend found
floating around at Apple, KOFY-TV, channel 20 in the San Francisco
area, will be broadcasting a one-minute-long "magazine" early in
the morning of 1 October. The magazine won't be a typical TV
magazine show, but will be a minute-long montage of still frames
of text and pictures, generated on a Macintosh.
The still images of the Future Media StillFrame Edition will go by
on the screen far too quickly to be viewed at full speed, but
viewers who videotape the broadcast (which will be some time
between 1:56 and 2:00 am) can view the magazine frame by frame
later on (or the next morning, for those who like to be asleep at
2 am). You'll need a good TV and a four-head VCR to get a high
enough image quality to read the text.
The magazine is being generated by scanning images from H-8 video
cameras into the Macintosh, and then laying them into screen-sized
pages of text and pictures using page layout software. The text
will be no smaller than 24 point, so it can be read from the
television image.
I doubt that this will become a popular publishing medium, because
it requires some effort from the reader/viewer/user beyond sitting
and absorbing. No doubt this initial broadcast will get lots of
viewers... but once the novelty wears off, people aren't likely to
bother.
KOFY-TV -- 415/821-2020
Future Media -- 415/548-0341
Information from:
Newsbytes article 19-Jul-91
A New Voice
-----------
Recent discussions on USENET have mentioned a new version of
MacInTalk that's supposedly in the works at Apple. Last year
MacInTalk sparked some heated debates when Apple announced the
aging speech-synthesis software would no longer be supported and
could not be counted on to work with future system software or
hardware releases. The new version sounds like it's a step ahead
of the old software which, while it was certainly handy, was
hardly impressive as speech synthesis went.
At the Apple Australian University Consortium Conference last
month, Caroline Henton of the ATG talked about the new software
and gave a demonstration, which was said to be very impressive.
The new MacInTalk will run on all Macs, and is purely software-
based. It will support multiple voices, though the version that
was demonstrated only included an American English female voice.
Technically, the software uses concatenative synthesis, which
presumably means that the component sounds of natural speech are
assembled, or concatenated, in the right order to generate
understandable, natural-sounding utterances. This differs from two
other forms of speech synthesis: formant synthesis, which
generates utterances based on the characteristic sound waves of
spoken sounds and combinations of sounds; and articulatory
synthesis. I can't really even guess about the latter, despite a
linguistic background, except to offer the speculation of Matthew
T. Russotto, who suggested that articulatory synthesis might
attempt to imitate the sound properties of the human throat and
mouth.
The good news is that, whatever the technology behind it, the new
MacInTalk is intended to sound as natural as possible. This
contrasts with a common approach that trades naturalness for
intelligibility. With well-planned utterances, pure
intelligibility is a little less of a concern, because the human
listener can "fill in" bits and pieces of missing sound when
what's being said sounds natural enough. This is accomplished in
face to face communications partially through unconscious lip-
reading, though hints such as context and previous conversations
help to fill in the rest, especially on the telephone or in other
situations where lip-reading isn't feasible.
MacInTalk has certainly made a difference for the Macintosh; it
has allowed games to speak, but it has also allowed sightless Mac
users to "hear" what's on the screen through software such as
OutSpoken. A new version that sounds like natural speech and works
on new Macs will be welcome.
Information from:
Michael Newbery -- newbery@rata.vuw.ac.nz
Matthew T. Russotto -- russotto@eng.umd.edu
Integrated Software Wars
------------------------
Back in the early days of Macintosh, when a list of all the
software available for the Mac could be printed in the back of
every issue of MacUser, a small company called Lotus introduced a
new product class for the Mac: integrated software. Jazz, which
included word processing, database, communications, and charting
functions, wasn't based on a completely new idea; Apple had
AppleWorks for the Apple ][ series, and there were some similar
products for DOS. But it was a new thing for Mac users, who until
then had usually had to swap floppies, and often change startup
disks, to switch tasks.
Jazz fell by the wayside a long time ago, and its planned
successor, Modern Jazz, never materialized. In the meantime,
Microsoft, which has been accused of following a "me-too" software
approach after making a name for itself with MS-DOS a decade ago,
introduced Microsoft Works. Works was similar in approach to Jazz,
but a lower price, better compatibility with other software, and
Microsoft's market clout gave it a much bigger market share.
Even Microsoft Works was not an outstanding package. It has
existed at the front of its category for a long time mainly
because there were no other players, and not that strong a demand.
When Apple introduced its three new inexpensive Macs last fall,
though, they created a relatively new market: low-end users with
low-end pocketbooks to match. These users thought that being able
to buy a single, inexpensive package that filled most of their
software needs was a great idea.
At this point, some other developers realized that there was a
market to forge. Symantec, Beagle Bros, and Claris have all
announced integrated software packages, and in fact Symantec has
shipped their entry, called GreatWorks. BeagleWorks was presumably
the subject of the "we could tell you, but then we'd have to kill
you" ad a few weeks ago, and Claris Works offers the standard
interface that most Claris products have in common.
Symantec and Beagle Bros sound like unusual sources for this kind
of productivity software, but in fact this move makes sense for
them. Symantec has been looking to leap into the Mac productivity
arena for a while; they have a strong presence in the utility
software and programming environment areas, but their general
productivity software has existed only on DOS platforms. Beagle
Bros is a company well known among old-timers for its innovative
utilities for the Apple ][, but what's probably less known is that
they wrote AppleWorks 3.0 for Claris, according to a recent
MacWEEK article. This makes them a great candidate for designing a
new product in the integrated category for the Mac.
It remains to be seen how all of these products will fare,
especially since the new entries are up against the Microsoft
monolith. Microsoft has already taken the first step towards
securing its market share, or at least as large a chunk as
possible, by lowering the retail price of Microsoft Works from
$295 to $249. (The other integrated packages have, or are expected
to have, suggested retail prices of $295 or $299.) That's not a
huge price reduction, but in this low-end market, that almost $50
cut could make a big difference to buyers. Without that price
differential Microsoft Works would no longer stand out; in fact,
GreatWorks seems overall to be a better package; but with it, the
buyer has another reason to lean towards the Microsoft product.
I wouldn't be surprised to see some changes to the retail pricing
of BeagleWorks and Claris Works before they ship, but it would
probably be a mistake for Symantec to reduce the GreatWorks price
immediately. We'll provide additional coverage to the Integrated
Software Wars as events warrant, but in the meantime it should be
amusing to watch Microsoft fighting a battle it thought was long
since won.
Related articles:
MacWEEK -- 7-16-91, Vol. 5, #25, pg. 1
MacWEEK -- 30-Jul-91, Vol. 5, #26, pg. 7
Playboy -- Sep-91, Vol. 38, #9, pg. 134
Reviews/5-Aug-91
----------------
* MacWEEK
MacroMind Three-D, pg. 41
GreatWorks, pg. 41
MacDraw Pro, pg. 44
GraceLAN 2.0, pg. 44
At Your Service, pg. 46
CD-ROM Drives, pg. 50
CMS Enhancements PCD-600
Hitachi CDR-1750S
Liberty 115CD
MacProducts Magic CD-ROM
NEC CDR-73
Procom HiPerformance CD-ROM
Relax Vista CD-ROM
Toshiba TXM-3301E1-MAC
ContoursPro, pg. 50
MacroMind Director 3.0, pg. 57
Carbon Copy Mac 2.0, pg. 60
ScanMaker 1850S, pg. 60
* InfoWorld
Claris Resolve, pg. 64
My Advanced Database, pg. 65
References:
MacWEEK -- 30-Jul-91, Vol. 5, #26
InfoWorld -- 29-Jul-91, Vol. 13, #30
..
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